Intelligent automated assistants (or digital assistants) can provide a beneficial interface between human users and electronic devices. Such assistants can allow users to interact with devices or systems using natural language in spoken and/or text forms. For example, a user can provide a speech input containing a user request to a digital assistant operating on an electronic device. The digital assistant can interpret the user's intent from the speech input and operationalize the user's intent into tasks. The tasks can then be performed by executing one or more services of the electronic device, and a relevant output responsive to the user request can be returned to the user.
Using a digital assistant typically require direct interaction between the user and the digital assistant. For example, the user may be required to be in close proximity (e.g., in the same room) with the electronic device on which the digital assistant operates. The digital assistant may thus directly receive the user's speech input via its microphone and provide response to the user via its speaker. Under certain circumstances, requiring the user to be in close proximity with the electronic device may cause difficulty and inconvenience for the user to interact with the digital assistant. For example, if the user and the electronic device on which the digital assistant operates are separated beyond a distance (e.g., in different rooms) such that the digital assistant is incapable of, or has difficult of, receiving the user's speech input, the digital assistant may be incapable of providing digital assistant services to the user. Thus, techniques for far-field extension of digital assistant services are desired.
Furthermore, different types of electronic devices may have different capabilities. As a result, digital assistant services provided at different devices may be different. Certain digital assistant services may not be provided at certain devices due to device capability limitations. For example, while a digital assistant operating on a smartphone device may output voice reading of text messages, a digital assistant operating on a TV set-top box may be incapable of doing the same due to device limitations. Thus, it is desired to provide digital assistant services using multiple devices to mitigate the device capability limitation.